Title: Fascination
Series: DS9
Season: Three
Writer(s): Ira Steven Behr/ James Crocker and Philip Lazebnik
Main character(s): Lwaxxana Troi
Plot: Oh god! There
is none. Deanna’s mother is in heat due to something called Zanthi fever and her telepathic powers allow her to unconsciously transfer her feelings to anyone within range so that everyone starts hitting on everyone else. That’s it. Honestly.
Jesus Christ in a platinum-lined bucket covered in velvet! This has to rank as one of the worst episodes, not only of Deep Space 9, but of
Star Trek in general. It’s just garbage; no, that’s being unfair to garbage. How this got to the editing room is beyond me. There’s not even a subplot. Everyone just starts falling in love with anyone they see, leading to some --- ho ho ho --- hilarious situations when old friends profess love for each other and boyfriends desert girl --- look, I can’t go on. It’s fu
cking awful. How this took three writers is a mystery: a dead rock could have come up with a better storyline. It’s worse than
Benny Hill meets
Star Trek. Just dire. And to top it all off, Lwaxanna gets to lord it over everyone for the entire fu
cking episode! God I
hate that woman! Never EVER EVER watch! You have been warned!
Rating:
(and that’s only because I can’t give it a higher rating!)
Title: Masks
Series: TNG
Season: Seven
Writer(s): Joe Menosky
Main character(s): Data
Plot: The
Enterprise comes across a comet in which is an ancient temple (no, really!) and thereafter for some reason Data takes on multiple personalities while the ship begins to be transformed into a jungle???
It's ludicrous. How in the name of the good god Fu
ck Almighty can
anything --- never mind a bloody
temple! --- exist at the heart of a comet? But even putting that to one side, why suddenly do all these so-called gods start invading Data's program and trying to play out their lives through him? It makes no sense. It's also a completely stupid and cack-handed resolution at the end. Being a season seven episode it doesn't get a pass; at this point, though they may have been running out of ideas, there is no excuse for this claptrap. The only possible good thing about this is that it gives Brent Spiner a chance to shine, portraying all the different characters and he does this very well. But even his phenomenal acting can't save this from the lowest (or highest, if you prefer, higher being worse) Wesley rating.
Rating:
Title: Angel One
Series: TNG
Season: One
Writer(s): Patrick Barry
Main character(s): Riker, Data, Crusher
Plot: Attempting perhaps to reverse twenty-odd years of Gene Roddenberry's thinly-veiled misogynism in the original series, the writers come up with the idea of a planet ruled by women, making the men subservient. All well and good, until the story is skewed by putting the women in the wrong; they intend to execute the men who have dared to disobey them, and in the end the men are set free and the woman in charge sort of huffily tosses her head and sulks off to the hairdresser. Jesus!
Perhaps one of the most embarrassing aspects of this episode was seeing Riker being made serve Beata, the woman in charge, and kind of like it. Deanna had a good laugh at him, but hers is the only laugh in the episode. It's heavy-handed, badly written, and if, as Wiki says, it's supposed to reflect Apartheid, well all I can say is it failed miserably. Even the prospect of the Enterprise crew catching a nasty virus and a visit to the Neutral Zone can't lift this turd out of the toilet.
Rating:
Title: The 37s
Series: VOY
Season: Two
Writer(s): Jeri Taylor, Brannon Braga
Main character(s): Janeway, Chakotay
Plot: Amelia Earhart did not disappear on her solo flight in 1937: she was abducted by aliens!
Honestly, how could two of the principal writers for Voyager ever write this nonsense? When everyone was returned at the end of
Close Encounters we kind of accepted it; maybe aliens
had abducted Glenn Miller, Buddy Holly, a whole squadron of F4U Corsairs from the US Navy. But this? Janeway and her crew pick up an SOS and find Earhart and her navigator alive and well on the planet, demanding to speak to J. Edgar Hoover! Listen buddy, so would I. Maybe he could have made sense of this. Ridiculously, Janeway is torn at the end at the decision as to whether she “condemns all her crew to a seventy-year journey home” and allows them the choice to remain on the planet (which none of them do): hasn't she already made this decision for them by blowing up the Caretaker's array in episode one? Why is she agonising about it now?
Rating:
Title: Who mourns for Adonais?
Series: TOS
Season: Two
Writer(s): Gilbert Ralston, Gene L. Coon
Main character(s): Kirk, Spock
Plot: The
Enterprise crew meet the god Apollo.
Speaking of things lost, or thought lost, who should the
Enterprise bump into one fine day than jolly old Apollo himself, son of Zeus? He of course wants the crew to stay and worship him, and falls in love with a young crew woman, but Kirk has other ideas and as usual spoils the party. Hey, if his female crewmembers are gonna worship anyone, it had better be
him!
Rating:
